By being a user on an IRC network, you are bound to come across people who are looking to cause nothing but trouble. When you spot users such as these, the first thing you should ask yourself is: "What would be the best and most efficient way to deal with this user?"

Believe it or not, most troublemakers can be dealt with on your own, or with the help of a channel operator. In most cases, doing so is more efficient than reporting the matter to #help or #services, because we will simply tell you to do the same thing. The purpose of this post is to guide you through the steps to taking care of these annoyances.

General Trolls:

Broadly speaking, trolls are users who are looking for trouble. A few examples of what they may do is saying hateful things, angering users, causing disturbances... and the list goes on. Dealing with them is quite simple. Just ban them from the channel, or use /ignore. There is no reason to report them to #help or #services if they are not breaking any network rules, and it ends up wasting everyone's time. Retaliating against them with insults isn't going to make anything better; that's just what they want. Do the mature thing and use /ignore.Do a /whois on the user and find out their host, then ignore them with:

/ignore *!*@host.mask

Occassionally a user will change their host to try and get around the ignore. See the Ban Evaders section for more information. There are also two user modes which will block incoming private messages from unknown users: +G and +g. +g will block private messages from all users who are not on your accept list, and you will be notified every time they try to message you. The command is:

/mode yournick +g

+G is similar to +g, except that it blocks all private messages from users that do not share a common channel with you and that are not on your accept list. The command is:

Flooders are users who flood channels with usually random and often repeated messages in order to disrupt the chat or to annoy people in the channel. They are easy to deal with; just simply ban them from the channel, or get a channel operator to. Do a /whois on the flooder and find out their host, then set a proper ban with the command:

/mode #channel +b *!*@host.mask

Additionally, if you are the channel founder, and you have a bot from BotServ in your channel, you could configure it so that the bot kicks people who are flooding. The command is:

/msg BotServ kick #channel flood ON

With this option turned on, the bot will kick when a user floods using at least 6 lines in 10 seconds. For a more specific flood kicker configuration, see:

/msg BotServ help kick flood

Also, it should be noted that if you are trying to use ttb with this command, there is a slight bug and it may take the founder a few tries to get it working. Keep entering the command; it will work eventually.

However, if the problem persists, please report it to #services.

Ban Evaders:

This should be obvious, but these troublemakers are users who evade channel bans by changing their nicks, idents, hostmasks, or whatever the ban was set to. Most often, though, they can be kept out by setting a proper ban. Take this for example:

See the problem there? That was a poor ban, because it only affected the nick "Asmodeus". The user was able to evade it quite easily just by changing his nick. A better ban would be for *!*@He.Is.Trying.To.Be.Tough.Guy; a ban set on his host. The user could remove the vhost and join the channel with his real host, in which case you should ban that, too. If the evader continues to evade through different hosts and vhosts, please report the matter to #services. Additionally, if you have SOP or Founder status in the channel, you could add the user to the akick list through:

/msg ChanServ akick #channel add nickreason

Spammers:

Spammers, by definition, are users who join a channel to paste a link, or some type of advertisement telling users to join a channel or a different network. These cases should be reported to #services on sight. Also, be sure not to click on any spammer's link as it may be harmful to your computer. Here are some examples of a spammer in action:

[16:46:35] * Siesta_00 (qwebirc@Rizon-C7F08090.dyn.optonline.net) has joined #fanclub
[16:46:40] Siesta_00: Join us at #funandpopular@irc.funfun.net for party games!
[16:46:43] * Siesta_00 (qwebirc@Rizon-C7F08090.dyn.optonline.net) has left #fanclub

Script Kiddies:

A kiddie is someone using harmful scripts and programs written by others, because they lack the ability to do so themselves. They use these to attack computer systems and networks. If you ever come across a kiddie channel or a script kiddie, please join #services and report it to us.